Director, Strategic Marketing

API Heat Transfer is a PE-backed, $230M global leader in thermal management solutions serving mission-critical applications across data centers, energy, chemicals, HVAC, and advanced industrial markets. As API continues to scale and evolve into a multi-platform growth company, we are investing in our centralized marketing function to design and drive marketing strategy, improve commercial execution, strengthen our enterprise value proposition, and accelerate organic growth.

We are seeking a Director of Strategic Marketing to design and lead this function. This is not a traditional corporate marketing role. This leader will be responsible for turning marketing into a revenue, margin, and platform-value engine across all five of API's Business Units.

The Role

The Director of Strategic Marketing will define API's enterprise marketing strategy and how the company goes to market as a unified platform while enabling Business Units to win in their respective verticals. This leader will own API's enterprise positioning, customer and market intelligence, and commercial go-to-market programs, and will define the enterprise requirements and performance standards for demand generation and sales enablement capabilities. In doing so, they will convert corporate growth priorities into repeatable commercial programs and build a scalable, data-driven marketing engine that supports both organic growth and M&A-led expansion.

This role reports to the VP of Corporate Development & Strategy and will work in close partnership with the entire ELT, particularly Business Unit leadership. It will require significant cross-functional collaboration to ensure commercial strategies are supported by scalable, secure, and well-integrated enterprise capabilities.

Key Responsibilities

Marketing Strategy & Growth Priorities

• Develop and recommend a new API enterprise marketing strategy in partnership with executive leadership that is aligned with corporate growth objectives, portfolio strategy, and priority end markets
• Translate company strategy into clear marketing investment themes, recommended vertical priorities, and multi-year roadmaps
• Identify where API should concentrate resources across segments, applications, geographies, and customer types
• Partner with Corporate Development & Strategy to support inorganic growth through market landscaping, acquisition theses, and commercial integration playbooks
• Build annual marketing plans and multi-year roadmaps aligned to corporate growth objectives
• Lead quarterly reviews with BU leaders to assess strategic priorities and performance based on pipeline, competitive shifts, and customer insights

Enterprise Positioning & Platform Story

• Own and evolve API's enterprise-level value proposition, brand architecture, and positioning
• Develop vertical and application narratives (e.g., data centers, power generation, HVACR) that create differentiation and pricing power
• Own API's customer segmentation, key buyer personas, and market sizing by vertical and application to guide growth priorities and investment decisions
• Ensure consistent messaging across all sales and customer-facing touchpoints

Customer & Market Intelligence

• Lead API's market intelligence engine, including win/loss analysis, voice of customer research, and competitive intelligence
• Identify growth white spaces and attractive segments, with articulation of commercial opportunities and risks
• Provide actionable insights to BU leaders that inform marketing focus, pricing, product strategy, and sales coverage

Demand & Revenue Infrastructure

• Define the enterprise commercial requirements, use cases, and success metrics for API's demand and funnel capabilities, including website and social media strategy, CRM and marketing automation, lead scoring and routing, and attribution, ensuring solutions are enterprise-grade, secure, integrated, and operationally scalable
• Ensure leads, opportunities, and marketing investments are measurable and tied to revenue outcomes

Sales Enablement & Commercial Effectiveness

• Define and standardize the sales enablement toolkit across API, including pitch decks, case studies, application guides, ROI tools, and competitive battlecards
• Partner with BU product marketing and sales leaders to ensure tools are adopted , effective, and continuously improved, with an emphasis on reliability, scalability, and integration into the overall enterprise

Marketing Operating Model & Governance

• Build and lead the Marketing Center of Excellence, including vendor strategy, commercial martech requirements, and prioritization, aligned to enterprise architecture, security, and governance standards
• Establish clear COE vs. Business Unit roles, workflows, and standards
• Ensure marketing investments deliver ROI and support enterprise-level growth

What This Role Is Not

This is not a content-writing or design role. This role exists to set direction, build systems, and drive commercial impact.

Ideal Background

We are looking for a hands-on, commercially minded marketing leader who has built scalable go-to-market engines in complex B2B environments. Ideal candidates will have:

• 8-12+ years of experience in B2B, industrial, or technology marketing
• Experience working in multi-business, PE-backed, or platform environments
• Strong background in customer and market intelligence, sales enablement, and demand infrastructure
• Proven ability to partner with sales, product, and executive leadership, and to design & run a multi-year program
• A passion for storytelling and creating a narrative that adds richness to a well-developed strategy
• A data-driven, pragmatic, execution-oriented mindset
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  Experience in thermal management, data center, or industrial markets is a plus, but not required.
  
  
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  Location in the Chicago area, open to other locations based on candidate experience and fit.
  
  

Why This Role Matters

This role operates within a highly collaborative executive environment. The Director of Strategic Marketing sets enterprise commercial direction, defines go-to-market priorities, and drives consistency and effectiveness across customer-facing activities. Success depends on strong cross-functional alignment to ensure strategies are executed through scalable, secure, and integrated enterprise capabilities.

The role sits at the center of API's next phase of growth. You will shape how the company is perceived by customers, how sales teams compete and win, and how API presents itself as a scalable, high-value platform to future investors and acquirers. The scope of this role is expected to expand materially as the Marketing COE matures and grows.

If you want to build a real commercial engine, not manage brochures, this is the job.

APICZ

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Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.